Ask the rocks

No no no no, not that kind, and not the kind who object to sexism; the other kind.

While a big part of magic is claiming the parts of ourselves that are powerful, for me it’s also about discovering a solid set of tools to heal myself and my community. So however you identify on the witchy spectrum, here are five simple witchy practices that anyone can do to take care of themselves, and that most of us should be doing more often.

Eye of newt, toe of frog? No, casting circles of protection.

Each and every one of us has the right to decide what kind of energy we want surrounding us. Circles of protection help with that. You can put them around your bedroom or your whole house (provided you have permission of everyone who lives there). You can even put them around event spaces. You can cast them for just a night or you can put one up permanently.

Putting up a circle is taking a giant stand for your own mental and psychic well being. If you are a sensitive person this is almost essential.

Here are some simple ways to put some protection around your home or room:

Hang herb bundles on the doors. Rosemary works great for this.

Put four large and protective rocks at each corner of your yard (if you have one) and gently pour a little water over each one, asking them to protect your home.

What if they say no? What do I do then?

Stand in the center of a room and rotate clockwise as you visualize a white light moving to surround the entire space. If you do this one, remember to take it down at the end of the night, circles like this can be draining if left up too long.

I love it when they do that – pretend the magic is dangerous if you do it too hard or too long or too cold. It’s so transparent. “If there’s a warning it must be real!”

Ward your doors and windows by putting a tiny protective symbol on the glass. Eyeliner works great for this if you have some around.

I will admit I was skeptical when I first started working with circles of protection, but they really do work. Having a protected home makes it feel like I have a haven to escape to. I also think it really has literally saved me from being robbed a few times, but that is another story.

That’s another one – “I was skeptical at first but by golly if it didn’t work!”

Another thing you can do is grounding. Then people will say about you, “She is so grounded.”

Grounding is the process of literally getting in connection with the earth; the ground. The earth is like a big neutral absorbing force. That’s why we ground electrical systems, because the earth actually absorbs and dissipates electricity. It does that with us, too. Grounding reminds us that we have bodies, that we are made of solid material, and that we need some care and feeding from time to time.

The easiest way to ground is to actually put your bare feet on the ground. But if you live anywhere other than the tropics, that may not be so easy to do all year round. Another method of grounding is to do a visualization where you place your feet on the floor and imagine roots growing from the bottoms of your feet. Visualize them actually going through the floor of where you live, and traveling through everything that separates you from the earth, and see them actually going into the earth.

And when you’ve done that – well you’re grounded. I was skeptical at first but you know what, it works. I haven’t tried it, but I can tell just by looking.

Here’s the author’s blurb:

Allison Carr is a witch, writer, healer, and queer. She holds a master’s degree in Chinese Medicine and is currently a stay-at-home-mom. She writes articles and teaches workshops on self-acceptence, healing, magic and spirituality. She lives in Santa Barbara with her partner and their son. For more information find her at her blog.

I’m having a problem understanding the geometry of this circle thing. First of all, if you put protective rocks in the corners of your yard, how is that a circle. That is, unless you found the magic way to square the circle. Then, if it’s a true circle that includes the rocks, your circle will impinge on someone else’s property. Didja get legal permission? Oh, it’s in Santa Barbara. The neighbors must be OK with it.
And does that circle extend to three dimensions? It can’t be effective if you can jump over a circle on the ground. Is it a hemisphere from the ground up or a full sphere extending into the ground? Or is it a cylinder extending up to infinity? Or is it a cone with an apex only so high?
Just wanna know the details before I commit to one too.

As a formerly practicing Wiccan, I can tell you that some people consider the circle to be a section of a cylinder, and some consider it a section of a sphere. And irregular polygons are completely fine as long as the line is closed. It can be amusing to watch people justify using the term “continuous line” to describe a mark made by walking and sprinkling liquid from their fingers. And there’s a preinstalled justification for beings that don’t recognise the awesome power of the collective fiction: “Cats and small children are able to cross the circle without disturbing the power flow.”

i had a Wiccan friend once complain about the child she was babysitting- the kid’s parents had been instilling them with a love of Jesus, and my friend was complaining about the parents instilling them with stupid superstitions.

She didn’t like it when I pointed out that this was rich coming from someone who carried around a bag of magic rocks to protect themselves.

I also think it really has literally saved me from being robbed a few times, but that is another story.

My son created some Llama begone spray as part of a humor project in high school. I know it works, because we never had any llamas at our house. And, of course, you know how common llama attacks are in Oklahoma City, right?

It also doubles as a convenient excuse for when it inevitably doesn’t work. “Sorry you got burgled, I couldn’t keep the magic up, it was too draining.” I can see how easily magic-doers could convince themselves it was true.

The comments on the article tho! My fav a woman asserting how much she enjoyed the article because it was “Practical and spiritual!” Yes, because there is nothing so eminently practical as magic rocks and protection spells. Does she think she is in an actual Buffy episode? Also, the Witches of Eastwick isn’t real sweetie, I know, I know. It’s sad.

However, I am going to (sort of) stand up for the “grounding” thing. It isn’t magical. But it is sort of an effective technique for regaining control over your brain if you notice yourself getting caught up in negative or otherwise overwhelming thoughts. Again, this is not magic. And it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with “why we ground electrical systems”, FFS. It’s also not unique, there are lots of other things you can do to achieve the same thing, like taking a walk, making yourself cold, concentrating on breathing, etc. One reason that this one can be helpful is that other people can’t really tell that you are doing it, so you can use it if your thoughts get away from you in a crowded situation.

Once, when I was a student, my shoes fell to bits and I couldn’t afford new ones, so I walked around with no shoes for half a year. And I don’t even live in the tropics. Yeah, I know, somehow it was manageable.

I’m not sure I noticed any mystical effects but I’m known to be closed minded about shit people just make up.

@dmcclean:

Then why do we need the paraphernalia of woo? I know you weren’t supporting nonsense but instead saying that the nonsense can accidentally help good things happen all the same.

But that’s still a really bad excuse to peddle the nonsense.

On a different note, old-skool skepticism is fun, isn’t it? It reminds me of why we all did it in the first place and then saddens me because we fucked it up.

We don’t need the paraphernalia of woo and beyond that it’s actively harmful.

I’m not saying that “nonsense can accidentally help good things happen”. I’m saying that this particular thing is an actually useful thing that for some reason the person quoted in the OP has chosen to peddle by using nonsense.

Unfortunately the line between this sort of thing and woo can be very blurry, and there are a lot of people interested in blurring it. I say unfortunately because that can make woo-averse people unwilling/reluctant to learn about woo-adjacent (for lack of a better word) techniques of this sort that can be legitimately helpful through entirely non-magical mechanisms. As evidence for this latter claim I have only myself, but since it’s an existential claim and not a universal one I don’t feel that badly about it. I might be able to dig something else up (patient surveys?) if it would be helpful.

30-ish years later, by the way, I don’t wear shoes unless I absolutely have to for no other reasons that a) I like it that way and b) I can’t be arsed to put shoes on, most of the time. You’re lucky if you catch me with trousers. If anyone is “grounded”, it’s probably me. But note how the witch says that grounding is “another thing you can do” and doesn’t say what it’s supposed to achieve. Giving me money is another thing you can do. People should definitely do that. I won’t tell you what it will achieve, but it’s certainly another thing you could do. Maybe I’ll buy some shoes.

My 30 years of experience of walking around with occasional shoes tells me that if you don’t wear shoes very often you can expect a career with occasional pitfalls, a lot of monotony and occasional flashes of awesome. You can expect a number of partners you love or don’t for various reasons and maybe one or more that you love for every reason.

You’ll go on a long journey and you meet someone or fucking other who is tall, dark and unknown to you.

But if you have any real problems – medical or psychological, putting your feet on the floor or drawing circles with your laserbeam eyes suddenly can’t help you. Quite a shame, that.

I do know what you’re saying. @dmcclean, but it’d be nice to get rid of the bullshit altogether, wouldn’t it?

Or at least let’s put our faith in placebos. Literally. Let’s worship their efficacy and lack of side effects.

My completely made up theory is that proper drugs would then become even better because they’d work AND be a placebo. You can’t lose.

Or, you know, maybe we should keep calling bullshit on bullshit claims. Placebos will still work, I don’t think we need to worry about that, but conversations will be less tedious and vulnerable people will lose less money, gain more quality of life.

This reads like a sort of folk remedy for anxiety – if you feel unsafe or powerless, make up a little ritual to symbolically take control. I suppose it might even be some help to some people. I immediately think, though, of the potential for extra anxiety about whether you’ve done the ritual right – I used to keep compulsively checking that I’d locked the back door, then I put up wards, now I compulsively check that I’ve changed the wards properly each day – not an improvement, except for whoever’s selling ward components. And then, of course, there’s the potential for victim-blaming yourself if something bad happens, because it wasn’t in your power to prevent, but you convinced yourself it was, so if it happens anyway it’s your failure…

What I’m disputing is this bit: “But if you have any real problems – medical or psychological, putting your feet on the floor or drawing circles with your laserbeam eyes suddenly can’t help you.”

Putting your feet on the floor actually can be a helpful part of a helpful routine for getting yourself to a less problematic state of mind. I grant that it doesn’t sound like it should be. And I grant that the helpful effect doesn’t actually come from the floor. This is a placebo, it matches the definition that google serves up: “a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect”.

When placebos are effective I don’t see a problem in acknowledging that. Labeling such an acknowledgement “worship” is a silly rhetorical technique.

By all means call bullshit on bullshit claims. I’m all for that. And I’m calling bullshit on 90% of the quoted matter in the OP. But where bullshit artists happen to mix true claims in with their bullshit, it can be helpful to note that they’ve done so, so that we don’t let them steal effective things and claim them for bullshit. Otherwise people can be fooled into thinking that, because it works, it works for the bullshit reasons stated, and bullshit is valid.

Woo-woo is a kind of national, pink-collar, intellectual ghetto. A millstone around the neck of women. Just in case any part of your soul has escaped the patriarchal religions of your childhood, we can club it into submission and silence with Chinese Medicine and ‘energy healing.’

But let’s be clear, it ain’t gonna cure your broken leg, your cancer or even that ache in your knee that everyone older than 40 gets on a Monday morning that makes them think about phoning in sick. That might just be me.

And let’s be doubly clear: many if not most of the advocates of things that are really placebos are trying to persuade vulnerable people that whatever horrible thing they are desperate to have cured can be cured by snakewater. Lots of people die because of it.

I’m sure you see the difference between a physician prescribing a placebo and a random person selling someone a placebo in the guise of special medicine that actual doctors refuse to acknowledge is real… lending it legitimacy to many people.

One of them is… dicey and I’m not generally in favour of it. The other is wrong in just about every possible sense.

I have no sympathy at all for the idea that since there’s a placebo effect we’re justified in bullshitting patients.

For one thing, there’s no need: Medical-sounding placebos are just as effective as bullshit-sounding placebos, pretty much by definition. Co opting someone’s beliefs in nonsense isn’t necessary. A physician would do better to foster their patients’ critical thinking and their critical examination about whether the medicine worked, I think.

But more importantly, patients can also be tricked into feeling better when they’re actually not. That’s one of the many reasons that the use of placebos by actual medial people is really dubious and why their use by people who feel entitled to practice medicine without knowledge or license should be criminal.

I actually don’t think there is much of a placebo effect, certainly not as much as many people seem to think. Studies and meta-analyses looking at that by having a third arm of the study where no treatment at all is given tend to agree, see for example http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12535498.

That there is no or little placebo effect in general does not however mean that particular placebos, under the definition I quoted in 16, are not effective.

As a result, I share your lack of sympath for the idea that we’re justified in bullshitting patients, both for your reason and for the reason of rejecting your premise about the significance of a general placebo effect.

Other than that I agree with nearly everything in 17. I don’t really see how it is relevant in response to what I wrote, but it is certainly relevant to general discussion of the OP, and sensible.

(This one sentence doesn’t make sense either: “For one thing, there’s no need: Medical-sounding placebos are just as effective as bullshit-sounding placebos, pretty much by definition.” I certainly don’t see how this is true by definition, unless you are using a very different definition. If that’s the case, could you supply it? If you use a definition similar to the one that I quoted, this is not true at all. Various placebos may be effective or ineffective, but it has little or nothing to do with how they sound, as there is very weak evidence for the existence of a general placebo effect. Those placebos that are effective are effective by means of their psychological effects and are placebos under the above definition by virtue of their lack of harms or physiological effects, this includes many forms of therapy, at least those that are largely harmless.)

I certainly don’t see how this is true by definition, unless you are using a very different definition.

I’m not really sure how to respond to that. Things that are obviously bullshit, such as, oh I don’t know, reiki and homeopathy have been shown to make people feel better in some circumstances (although not as far as I know, when the studies are properly controlled). So have sugar pills masquerading as medicine and administered in a medical context.

The former is carried out in the context of authority from woo, the latter in authority from medicine. Both seem to work equally well or poorly.

By definition, the placebo effect doesn’t and couldn’t discriminate.

The point I was trying – poorly – to make is that feeding someone’s belief in nonsense doesn’t seem to be a good idea even if it superficially helps some people feel better.

The point I was trying – poorly – to make is that feeding someone’s belief in nonsense doesn’t seem to be a good idea even if it superficially helps some people feel better.

Agreed.

I’m not really sure how to respond to that.

I’ll try to unpack it a bit further. You claimed: “Medical-sounding placebos are just as effective as bullshit-sounding placebos, pretty much by definition.” Since you gave no other, let’s use the definition of placebo that google gives and that I had quoted above: “a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect”. As far as I can see, there’s no connection between your claim and the definition. Generally for something to be “true by definition” it means that, working from the definition and no other evidence, we should be able to see that the claim is true. That isn’t the case here, because the definition doesn’t tell us anything about the efficacy of placebos in general, of medical-sounding placebos, or of bullshit-sounding placebos. The reason it doesn’t tell us that is because it only requires a lack of “physiological effect” that the prescriber feels is of equal or more benefit than its psychological effect. You seem to be thinking that the definition of placebo is “something that isn’t effective”, in which case your claim would be true by definition, but since that isn’t the definition, it isn’t. Some other definitions I found define a placebo to be something without “pharmacological” effect, but that isn’t the same thing either. I found another requiring no “physical” effect, which would arguably qualify, but on the flip side it only encompasses “a pill or substance given to a patient” and thus doesn’t include the type of prescribed behaviors that we are discussing. There’s no reason (definitional or otherwise) I can see to think that all placebos are equally effective.

I checked four dictionaries, but there are certainly others out there, which is why I said initially that if you had a preferred definition under which this claim was definitionally true, it would be helpful if you would share it.

Things that are obviously bullshit, such as, oh I don’t know, reiki and homeopathy have been shown to make people feel better in some circumstances (although not as far as I know, when the studies are properly controlled). So have sugar pills masquerading as medicine and administered in a medical context.

Indeed, properly controlled studies haven’t found efficacy for reiki or homeopathy. Here’s the thing: properly controlled studies haven’t found much if any efficacy for sugar pills masquerading as medicine and administered in a medical context. Many people think they have, because they see that the placebo arms of 2-arm RCTs frequently find some improvement in patients, and they think this must be because of the placebo effect. Those studies, while properly controlled with respect to what they are investigating, are not properly controlled with respect to whether sugar pills have an effect, because they don’t include an arm to whom sugar pills are not given. When you look at studies that do include such an arm, the difference between it and the placebo arm is generally insignificant or very small. I cited evidence above to that effect. There are a few conditions where this appears not to be the case, but overall it is. Thus, most of what people mistakenly think is a fairly large general placebo effect is in fact just that sick people sometimes get better to some degree for no particular reason, with or without intervention, be it placebo or otherwise.

Your claim that “by definition, the placebo effect doesn’t and couldn’t discriminate” between woo and non-woo authority, is true but uninteresting. It’s uninteresting because, if there is a placebo effect at all, evidence shows it to be pretty small. (Evidence from RCTs that include both a placebo and no-treatment arms.) But that doesn’t mean that individual placebos, defined to be “a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect”, can’t be effective. They can be effective for reasons other than the placebo effect. For example “taking a walk when you are feeling anxious” is such a procedure, it has psychological benefits, and it is prescribed more for those benefits than for any physiological effect. Thus I see no particular reason to reject individual interventions, like the one I started talking about in my first comment on the thread, that we have reasonable cause to believe have useful psychological effects, just because they have no significant physiological effects and therefore meet the definition of a placebo.

I feel so bad for all the women the former USSR who didn’t even have their own eyeliner, so how could they make those protective marks on their windows?? Someone back then in the 1960s told me that communists were awful b/c 1) they only had ONE flavor of ice cream and 2) they forced their citizens to share eye makeup.

It seems so unfair. No wonder stuff went so wrong for them in the end.

I’m not willing to be hard on people like this. There is no evidence, at all, that the universe works the way they think it does. And, insofar as events occur after the believers perform some ritual, there is never any path that leads back from the event to the ritual.

But, on the emotional side, rituals, surroundings, and electrochemical processes can be correlated with a happy emotional state. For example, I love the mountains (I live in Denver). When I get to leave the city, visit an alpine meadow, lay back and enjoy the sun, I always feel much better. I know for a certainty it’s all physics and those electrochemical processes, but I still feel better.

Maybe these believers don’t have the education I do. Maybe their facilities for those electrochemical processes (otherwise known as the brain) are built a little differently than mine. I don’t know. All I know is that we all respond to external stimuli, and that some people can’t see the reality behind their response.

I carry around a pebble I found on Long’s Peak. It doesn’t have any magical, mystical, properties; there’s nothing particularly special about it, it’s pink and smoothe. Everytime I touch it, I feel a little moment of happiness — arising from the memories I associate with it. I might call it my magic rock, but that’s just a shorthand, and very inaccurate, way of referring to all the real experiences and memories associated with it.

But the post isn’t about the believers, it’s about people who instruct the believers what to believe. I too have a passion for landscapes, walks in wildflower meadows or along rivers or you name it, but I can do that without adding in a lot of made-up puffery about the mental life of rocks. I too have objects that have emotional power for me – an absurd number of them in fact, because I keep lots of detritus whenever I travel because it’s associated with travel and that makes it Special; but I don’t need to add magic formulas to them.